Literature
Historical Fantasy Fiction
Historical fantasy fiction is a genre that combines elements of historical fiction with fantastical or supernatural elements. It often takes place in a specific historical period and incorporates magical or mythical elements into the narrative. This genre allows authors to explore historical events and settings while adding imaginative and speculative elements to create unique and engaging stories.
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11 Key excerpts on "Historical Fantasy Fiction"
eBook - PDF- A. Stevens(Author)
- 2010(Publication Date)
- Palgrave Macmillan(Publisher)
In the contemporary context, likewise, historical novels can be found both on the bestseller lists (in the cases of the novels of James Michener and Patrick O’Brian, for instance) and critics’ lists. Critically acclaimed contemporary authors from Toni Morrison to Thomas Pynchon have tried their hand at historical fiction. Many other novelistic subgenres, such as crime fiction or science fiction, have stronger associations with popular or ‘genre’ fiction and are often relegated to separate genre-based sections at the local bookstore. Frequently when a ‘literary’ author uses the conventions of one of these other popular genres, such as Margaret Atwood’s use of science fiction in The Handmaid’s Tale or Paul Auster’s use of crime writing in The New York Trilogy , critics consider these works as postmodern acts of generic appropriation rather than genuine examples of the genre. Historical fiction, by contrast, has avoided this sort of ghettoization; identifying a work as a historical novel tells you something about its setting but little about its artistic aspirations – it is a fictional genre that does not suffer the stigmatizing label of ‘genre fiction.’ Just as in the twentieth century historical fiction has remained part of the fictional mainstream, in the eighteenth century the history of the historical novel parallels and illuminates the story of the rise of the novel more generally.
- Laura Feldt(Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
In this type of literature, new and other realities are created; it is a literature replete with monsters, metamorphoses and strange occurrences. Fantastic literature, and horror too, is often said to have sprung from the Gothic tradition 2 to be continued and developed by Hoffmann and Poe (and many others) in the nineteenth century. Fantasy understood as literature dominated by alternative worlds was developed later, in the nineteenth century, 3 and brought to a peak in England in the middle of twentieth century. 4 This kind of narrative with ‘supernatural’ content, narratives of monsters, ghosts, magic, miracles and the like, has continued to evolve and today comprises a large variety of types, with the Harry Potter series as probably the most popular work of fantasy to date. In the following, for the sake of convenience, I refer to all theories of fantastic literature, fantasy, magical realism, horror and neighbouring genres and terminology (supernatural fiction, speculative fiction etc.), as fantasy theory. 5 The field of fantasy theory consists of the literary-critical theories developed as critical reflections on these types of literature. Fantasy theory has its origin in the eighteenth century in Baumgarten’s theory of heterocosmic and utopian worlds and Breitinger’s theory of marvellous worlds, both modelled on Leibniz’ idea of possible worlds (Doležel 1990 : 33–52; Traill 1996 : 3). The later Romantics, however, were among the first to attempt to describe the various kinds of fantastic and fantasy literature and their characteristics (Traill 1996 : 3–4), and the interest continued into the twentieth century, with a preliminary critical peak in the post 1970s. Fantasy theory is historically characterized by an interest in definition and the specification of literary features that seem to fall short of the many types of fantasy practice witnessed today (Ivanovic et al
- Nick Hubble, Philip Tew, Leigh Wilson, Nick Hubble, Philip Tew, Leigh Wilson(Authors)
- 2015(Publication Date)
- Bloomsbury Academic(Publisher)
(81) In other words, by presenting the world changed in imagination, literature allows people to adapt mentally to the projected new possibilities, which, in turn, allow them to adapt to the change when it actually happens. Change, itself, is always potentially unsettling and unstable; the key element here, however, is not the change per se but the fact that such a changed set of conditions is presented The Historical Fiction of the 1990s 163 as a stable reality with which people will feel secure. The reason why Jameson links science fiction with historical fiction is that they both serve precisely such a purpose of allowing people to deal with change. The Waverley novels of Walter Scott provided a retrospective coming to terms with the shift in Scottish history from the feudalism of the Highland clans towards the dominance of the capitalist classical economics of Adam Smith and the rationalism of the Scottish Enlightenment. By the late nineteenth century, the pace of technological change in Britain shifted the focus of popular anxiety from the need to adapt to changes that had already happened to fear of the future changes that were inevitably coming. A writer such as H.G. Wells, in books ranging from The Time Machine (1895) to The Shape of Things to Come (1933), provided a framework for contemplating that change, which even if it included unpleasant features such as wars, suggested that at least there were various evolutionary stages for a society to progress or regress through and, therefore, that not just anything and everything could happen. In this manner, science fiction, like the historical fiction whose function it began to usurp in the 1880s and 1890s, actually functions by mapping the limits of possible change and showing how people might adjust to that, rather than simply celebrating unknown futures.
eBook - PDFUnraveling the Real
The Fantastic in Spanish-American Ficciones
- Cynthia Duncan(Author)
- 2010(Publication Date)
- Temple University Press(Publisher)
My purpose here is not to put an end to the debate, which would be an exercise in futility, but to look at the debate as emblematic of the fantastic itself. What is it about the genre that makes it so impossible to pin down? introduction / 3 One of the most pressing problems in any discussion of this imagi-nary vein of literature is what to call it. Do we highlight what it has in common, or how one type differs from another? Generic terms such as the supernatural or fantasy are somewhat misleading, since they have been appropriated by popular literature and film and sometimes refer to mass-marketed works that lack artistic merit. In contemporary criti-cism, fantasy is so broad a category that it is used to refer to science fic-tion, fairy tales, and ghost stories, along with other kinds of supernatu-ral and magical tales, and includes authors as widely diverse as Ursula LeGuinn, Stephen King, and J.K. Rowling. The uncanny, the marvelous, the absurd, the grotesque, and gothic horror, by contrast, are terms that have been coined in reference to specific works and writers and have such a clearly defined nature that their use is restricted to those par-ticular kinds of texts. 1 Magical realism, as the name suggests, describes works that blend the magical with the real, but the precise meaning of the term and its boundaries are far from stable entities in the world of literary criticism. The marvelous-real ( lo real maravilloso ) intersects with magical realism so often and so intimately that it is impossible to discuss one without reference to the other. For some, they are the same thing; for others, they mark different paths in the evolution of literary theory. 2 The fantastic is acknowledged as a neighboring genre to all of these types of fiction, but it has perhaps been the most difficult concept to grasp.
eBook - PDF- Lee Galda, , Lauren Liang, Bernice Cullinan, Lee Galda, Lauren Liang, Bernice Cullinan(Authors)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- Cengage Learning EMEA(Publisher)
Sometimes these stories are so steeped in ancient tales that it’s difficult to remember that they are, indeed, not folk-lore, but created by the imagination of an author. Humor, however, does not mean that a book is not deeply serious, as Kate DiCamillo and other writers have taught us. The essential element that distin-guishes “high” fantasy is “the search for meaning in life” that the story depicts, that “selective distort[ion] of reality in pursuit of truth” (Barron, 2012, p. 89). The fantastic element may be as simple as ani-mals that act like humans (or superheroes) or as complex as fully developed worlds that reflect real life with a significant twist, but they all allow read-ers to think about how the world works. Fantasy writers, playfully and seriously, use such devices as fully developed fantastic settings, nonhuman char-acters, and magic or magic realism to create fantasy. The metaphorical nature of fantasy allows young readers to consider ideas about things such as love and loss, prejudice, death, war, the consequences of beauty, heroism, pride, greed, and other serious Teaching Idea 7.2 EXPLORING GRAPHIC NOVEL SHORT STORIES This Teaching Idea addresses Common Core English Language Arts, Reading: Literature standard 9 for grades 4 through 8. The suggestions in this Teaching Idea may need to be adapted to suit your particular grade level and the needs of your students. The following are some examples of approaches you might want to pursue in using The Hidden Doors as a vehicle for discussing fantasy. ● Because each of the stories in The Hidden Doors features a door, ask small groups of students to compare and contrast how each author/artist chooses to address this element.
eBook - PDFDisney and the Dialectic of Desire
Fantasy as Social Practice
- Joseph Zornado(Author)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Palgrave Macmillan(Publisher)
At its root, fantasy manifests desire itself by virtue of the signifying practices of the Symbolic order. Fantasy is as old as think- ing and as a social practice; “Its association with imagination and with desire has made it an area difficult to articulate or to define,” according Rosemary Jackson (1988). In A Short History of Fantasy, Mendlesohn and James attempt to offer a schematic of fantasy, and do an admirable job of defining it as literature and art and “the presence of the impos- sible and the unexplainable” (2012, 3), that they then locate in literature from earlier historical periods down into fairy tale, myth, legend, and saga—though, as for that, they note that it is difficult to find so-called realist narratives that are not in one way or another adopting or adapt- ing elements of fantasy. They note that fantasy, the sort they identify in the literary tradition, has been relatively neglected by scholars, even as publishers and booksellers—along with loyal audiences—have codified a certain popular form of fantasy in spite of literary critics’s dismissive attitudes towards “fantasy” by virtue of its association with children and childhood, and, as such, unworthy of serious study (Mendlesohn 2012). 1 INTRODUCTION: WHAT IS FANTASY? 5 The dismissive critical attitudes literary critics have held towards fantasy echo the establishment’s dismissal of the, so-called, sentimental fiction of writers like Harriet Beecher Stowe. While Stowe—and other writers once marginalized—have received critical reappraisal, still fantasy not so much. The relative accomplishments of Tolkien, Le Guin, or Rowling remain hampered by what amounts to an ideological fantasy about the nature of fantasy as just fantasy. That fantasy in the form of narrative continues to dominate bestseller lists and worldwide box offices (Mendlesohn 2012). 2 Rather than representing serious storytelling’s childish cousin, fantasy is coeval with storytelling itself.
eBook - PDFCollision of Realities
Establishing Research on the Fantastic in Europe
- Lars Schmeink, Astrid Böger(Authors)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter(Publisher)
This inclusive and open definition might help to create a clearer concept of Fantasy, while allowing enough leeway for its artistic, psychological and social potential. 2. To the Farthest Shore and Back Again – The Development of Fantasy Fantasy as a genre did not spring from nothing. Like every other form of human cultural expression it has sources, precursors, and evolved in a pro-cess of historical development until it reached its current form. The sources of Fantasy reach back as far as literature itself. The Epic of Gilgamesh , the oldest recorded epic of world literature, committed to writ-ing between the 21st and the 6th century BC (Soden 9), stands at the be-ginning of a long tradition of mythological and epic literature that would later resurface in the motifs and structures of Fantasy. Other famous texts, like Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey , the Sanskrit epics Mahabharata and Ramayana , the Germanic Elder Edda and Anglo-Saxon Beowulf , the French Song of Ro-land , Arthurian Romances, as well as the Welsh Mabinogion are all named as possible sources. More secularly-minded critics would add to these the holy texts of the great world religions, the Old and the New Testament of the Bible, the Quran, and the Vedas for example. But even if Fantasy takes many of the elements present in these texts, recombining them eclectically to create its own Secondary Worlds, calling them precursors to Fantasy might be inappropriate. There is a fundamental, functional difference between them that critics have identified. Manlove postulates that Fantasy is to include a “substantial or irreducible element” of the supernatural or impossible (160). For him, Homer’s epics are indeed to a certain extent about the impact of the supernatural on the lives of mor-tals, yet they are “primarily concerned with the working out of human des-tiny” and thus too weak in supernatural content (160).
eBook - PDF- Steven Earnshaw(Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Edinburgh University Press(Publisher)
12 Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy Crawford Kilian Science fiction and fantasy seem unlikely partners. SF, after all, is about what could happen, given what we currently know about the universe. Fantasy is about what could never happen, because science has shown it to be impossible. But science itself uses fantasy to make its points, and fantasy tries to work out its own implications in a consistent manner. Science imagines elevators that fall forever, and spaceships that display clocks running slower and slower as the ships near the speed of light. Fantasy imagines the logical consequences of a spell, and the ecological niche of dragons. These are all ‘thought experiments’, ways of using fantasy to look at the world and ourselves outside the limits of ordinary experience. Whether you write SF or fantasy, you are conducting such a thought experiment: could a human love a robot, and could the robot requite that love? If magic worked, what would it cost? In both genres, you are really exploring the human mind under conditions that reveal something new – or something old, familiar and ingrained that we have taken for granted until you make us look at it again. Just as some rocks and flowers reveal unexpected colours under ultraviolet light, human nature looks different in the light of a distant star, or of a sorcerer’s glowing staff. In this chapter I want to throw some light on the similarities of the two genres as well as their differences. This will involve their history, their conventions, and their future. But mine is just one writer’s view; I hope that your own vision of your genre will be far more imaginative and original than mine. Origins of Science Fiction and Fantasy Fantasy arises from myth, folk tale, and fairy story. It began as an effort to personify the mys-terious forces that rule our world: lightning, rain, sunlight, ice, and earthquake.
eBook - PDF- Katherine A. Fowkes(Author)
- 2010(Publication Date)
- Wiley-Blackwell(Publisher)
As Todorov acknowledges, however, many stories mix and blend these three modes. The most expansive definition of literary fantasy argues that fantasy and mimesis (the imitation of reality) are diametrically opposed impulses that form the basis of all literature. Rather than trying to establish a separate fantasy genre, Kathryn Hume argues that a longstanding preference for and focus on mimesis has caused critics to denigrate and overlook the fantasy elements that pervade every type of literature. Realistic represen-tations of the world are considered paramount, and so art that deviates from realism has traditionally been devalued. While scholars have invoked Plato’s cave parable to explore the nature of cinematic illusion, Hume traces the disdain for fantasy directly to Plato, who distrusted poetry and all types of fantasy. Aristotle also ranked realism highly and claimed that all literature should be appraised according to how probable it seemed (Hume, 6). Hume explores a number of strands in the fantasy tradition, and concludes that fantasy is in no way less important than the mimetic perspective. The value of Hume’s position lies in the A BRIEF CRITICAL OVERVIEW 41 acknowledgement that what we choose to call fantasy is a question of degree and not of kind. Just as fantasy, science fiction, or horror fall along a continuum, so do realist and fantasy elements. Fantasy has the potential to challenge the status quo since it can explore what would otherwise be repressed, and so it is not surprising that psychological analyses of the genre are common. In Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion , Rosemary Jackson focuses on the many fantastic and Gothic texts that inform Todorov’s work, seeing the fantastic as being particu-larly open to a psychological reading because of its connection to fantasy as a mental process.
eBook - PDFBooks and Beyond
The Greenwood Encyclopedia of New American Reading [4 volumes]
- Kenneth Womack(Author)
- 2008(Publication Date)
- Greenwood(Publisher)
Today, publishers advertise historical horror, historical romance, and historical mystery—even alternate histories and historical political thrillers. In the nineteenth century there was only one flavor: a historical fiction writer was some- one who wrote action-packed tales set in distant, exotic places. Readers back then turned to their favorite authors—Alexandre Dumas, Sir Walter Scott, William Morris, Robert Louis Stevenson, and others less known today—for the same thrills modern readers turn to sword and sorcery. It is in the historical fiction of pulp magazines, however, where the genre’s similarities to sword and sorcery become even more striking. Historical Fiction of the Pulps. The pulp era began around the turn of the twentieth century, before radio and television. Magazines featuring a variety of diverting topics were found on the newsstands, printed on cheap, pulpy paper—hence the term pulps. Publishers attempted to print something for almost every reader, in the same way that TV channels attempt to broadcast something for almost every viewer. And like television, most of the product was bad, giving pulp fiction its modern connotations—cheap, sensationalist, and over-the-top writing. As with most popu- lar art forms, though, some gold glittered within the dross, and many famous writers were first published by (or at least appeared later) in the pulps. Most pulp historical fiction writers crafted tales of action and adventure, and many created serial characters. As in comic books (whose rise in popularity coin- cides with that of the pulps) and television series, serial characters served two purposes. First, they spared writers the chore of creating a new hero for each story; and second, once serial characters found an accepting editor or readership, they increased the chances of selling the story. This pulp historical fiction of the early twentieth century (circa 1915–1940) has almost all of the same elements as sword and sorcery.
eBook - PDF- Brian Baker(Author)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Red Globe Press(Publisher)
A rationally extrapolated genre where imaginary worlds and realities are creatively constructed in order to explore abstract concepts. These are all reasonable definitions. They tend to contain elements that emphasise science or reason; the imagination; alternative worlds or soci- eties; and a definite relationship between the imagined world and ‘our’ own, the world that produced it. The definition in the seventh edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) indicates a kind of value-judgement in its very opening word: ‘fanciful fiction based on postulated scientific dis- coveries or environmental changes, frequently dealing with space travel, life on other planets, etc.’. ‘Fanciful’ rather than ‘imaginative’ appears rather dismissive. It relies upon conceptions of some kind of imagined 7 other world, and also upon a library of images of science fiction sub-genres in that ‘etc.’: a definition that implies that we already know what it is. We know science fiction when we see it, the OED implies. Even if it does not contain spaceships, aliens from other planets, time travel, ray guns, the future. Damon Knight, writer and anthologist, indicated the problem of defining SF when he declared that it is ‘not one thing but many ... a science fiction story always postulates a world changed in some way from the world we know, but these changes are of many dif- ferent kinds and are made for different ends’ (Knight, 1977, p. x). In a recent critical book on the genre, Science Fiction: A Very Short Introduction (2011), David Seed begins by writing: Science fiction has proved notoriously difficult to define. It has vari- ously been explained as a combination of romance, science, and proph- ecy (Hugo Gernsback), ‘realistic speculation about future events’ (Robert Heinlein), and a genre based on an imagined alternative to the reader’s environment (Darko Suvin). It has been called a form of fantastic fiction and an historical literature.
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